Theatre in Review: Yellow Face (Roundabout Theatre Company/Todd Haimes Theatre)

	Daniel Dae Kim, Ryan Eggold. Photo: John Marcus

It's one of the oddest comebacks I can remember: When David Henry Hwang premiered Yellow Face at the Public Theatre in 2008, directed by Leigh Silverman, it felt scattered, unsure of itself, tangled in the weeds of its storytelling. (This is a minority opinion: it was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and won Obie and Lucille Lortel Awards. Nevertheless, it was a promising but not fully satisfactory work.) But the new production at the Todd Haimes -- directed by Silverman and once again featuring Francis Jue in a scene-stealing role) -- has acquired fresh confidence. Maybe it's the unhappy cultural moment we inhabit, but this re-emerged Yellow Face is now a nimble and frequently hilarious satire that -- just when the fun starts to fade a bit -- delivers a potent sting.

Mining some of his career low moments for material, Hwang spoofs culture warriors on both sides, racial bias in the news media, and good old-fashioned show business narcissism while also playing peekaboo games with fact and fiction. It begins with his involvement in the Miss Saigon controversy, a theatre-industry revolt against the casting of Jonathan Pryce as the Eurasian character The Engineer, a major brouhaha that nearly results in the production's cancellation. Having become "the poster child for political correctness," DHH (as he is known here) decides to strike back artistically, penning a farce, Face Value, which unfolds backstage at a Miss Saigon-style Broadway hit. To the playwright, starved for inspiration following his blockbuster M. Butterly, the idea is manna from heaven. But Face Value is a disaster in its Boston tryout; limping into New York, it closes in previews. (Hwang, the best of sports, gleefully quotes some of the most awful notices, including one titled "M. Turkey.")

In Yellow Face, however, an even bigger debacle looms, involving the decision to cast an actor named Marcus G. Dahlman in Face Value's lead role. Thanks to a misunderstanding, everyone involved in the production thinks Marcus is Asian despite his entirely Caucasian presentation, which causes nagging doubts. In one of the funnier sequences, the casting director Jay Binder, legally prevented from inquiring about Marcus's ethnicity, tries to evoke a casual response. "Seattle. Very...diverse town, isn't it?" he says about the actor's birthplace, additionally ticking off a list of groups, from Chinese to Hmong, and getting nowhere.

By the time DHH learns the embarrassing truth about Marcus, he is forced to collude with the actor, ginning up an Asian identity out of his Jewish Siberian roots. DHH's discomfort turns to agony when Marcus, fired from Face Value, garners rave reviews in a revival of The King and I. Soon, the actor has gone full-out Rachel Dolezal, adopting the mantle of an outspoken Asian rights activist and living with DHH's none-the-wiser ex-girlfriend. He also changes his name to "Marcus Gee," to polish his Eastern bona fides.

Silverman's fast, funny staging mines every bit of delicious irony as Marcus' career thrives and DHH's life spins out of control. Daniel Dae Kim nails the playwright's growing mortification as he goes from revered Asian community spokesperson to co-conspirator in racial fraud. As Marcus, Ryan Eggold is a master of evasion -- especially when schmoozing the guests at an Asian American center with accounts of his "struggle" -- who eventually falls for his own tall story. Once again committing grand theft larceny is Jue as DHH's father HYH, an immigrant drunk with love for his adopted country and blissfully blind to his son's problems. Offering unwanted professional advice, he urges DHH to write something like Miss Saigon, with its twist on the Madame Butterfly theme. "I already wrote a play criticizing Madame Butterfly!" DHH snaps. "What play was that?" wonders HYH. "M. Butterfly," his son replies, through gritted teeth. "That play is a little weird," HYH concludes.

Underscoring the theme of cultural representation and personal identity, Silverman deploys an agile troupe of supporting actors who play various roles, many of them bold-faced names, without regard to race or gender. Marinda Anderson lands big laughs as Jerry Zaks, director of Face Value, who, dumbfounded over the enthusiasm for casting Marcus, asks, "David, if our leading man, who's supposed to be an Asian dressing up in whiteface -- if when he takes off his make-up, he still looks white -- would that bother you?") Shannon Tyo hilariously channels a self-righteous Cameron Mackintosh, who wins no friends when announcing, "This is a tempest in an Oriental teapot." Anderson, who is Black, and Kevin Del Aguila appear as auditioning actors complaining that the Face Value script stereotypes or ignores them.) And everyone joins in as a chorus of xenophobic GOP Congressmen railing at invented Chinese conspiracies.

Greg Keller also appears, first as a narrator and then later as a wheedling, adenoidal New York Times reporter who, having spread a web of incorrect suspicions around the Los Alamos scientist Wen Ho Lee, goes after HYH, insinuating that the successful bank he founded is a money-laundering front for the Chinese government. The character, who sees Chinese corruption everywhere and isn't above a little blackmail, is known as "Name Withheld on Advice of Counsel," although if you do a little Google search, he isn't hard to suss out. (When the Times hatchet job on him is published, HYH is thrilled with his front-page placement, noting, "Dave, even you never been above the fold." He also looks forward to appearing before the Senate Banking Committee, where he plans to have his Joseph Welch moment.) This is where the play faltered in its original production, skidding into uncontrolled anger and speechmaking. Here, Silverman engineers a seamless transition, elegantly staging a showdown during which DHH turns the tables on NWAOC. What once seemed like the play's biggest weakness is now its gripping centerpiece.

I can imagine a more attractive set design than Arnulfo Maldonado's spartan pairing of box units, each featuring a video panel, but Yee Eun Nam's projections take up some of the slack with images of newspaper stories, magazine covers, and neon signs for an amusing, if faintly baffling, detour to a Combat Zone porn shop. The lighting, by Lap Chi Chu; sound, by Caroline Eng and Kate Marvin; and the costumes, by Anita Yavich, are solid contributions.

Both plot lines collide as Marcus finds himself under investigation for his charitable contributions to certain suspect Asian organizations, forcing DHH to make common cause with his very own Frankenstein creation. It also leads to a revelation about certain fictional devices, underscoring the point that Yellow Face is a gloss on Face Value, which was a comment on Miss Saigon, which reimagines Madame Butterfly, a story about Japan written and composed by Italians. If that sentence makes you dizzy, don't worry; in the hands of Hwang and Silverman, some vitally serious points are argued while providing abundant entertainment. Nearly two decades after its debut, Yellow Face's time has arrived. --David Barbour